Catching Up ..... Bacharach

We spent Friday learning about Bacharach (am Rhein) from a history, tourism and wine industry perspective.  It was perhaps the perfect embodiment of the German Business & Culture approach.  Bacharach is an old, and one time very important city on the Rhein which has been the center of commerce for a very long time.  Currently Bacharach's primary commerce is tourism and wine (and the combo of both).  We got a walking tour of town and discussed how the city functioned in its different eras.  Then we got a glimpse into how Bacharach markets itself via a presentation by the Tourism Office director.  Lastly we took a gorgeous walk through the vineyards and met Cecelia Yost in her family's vineyards and learned about wine from a production and a marketing perspective.  Her passion for her family's business was contagious and inspiring.  They are considered a young wine maker as they have only been in business since 1831. 

Special Thanks to Dirk Scherschlicht (and his wife Ellen) from the Bacharacher Hof Hotel in Bacharach who organized one of the absolute highlight days of the trip!  Visit them at http://www.bacharacher-hof.de/index.html

 a few photos....

Here is the link to Toni Jost: http://www.tonijost.de/

Catching Up ..... The Rhein!

We had a great day on Thursday pretending we were Germans doing a little Wandering (hiking).  We alos visited the Neiderwald Denkmal that commemorates the unification of Germany as a modern nation state in 1871 (Yes the USA is an older nation as modern nation states go).  We had a great day.  A few photos....

The Rhein, Bacharach & Team Morning Hike

We had a long travel day yesterday.  Two trains to Koblenz, cabs to the waterfront, and then a 4.5 hour boat ride up the Rhein to Bacharach.  And when you go up the Rhein you are traveling south as it is one of the only rivers in the Northern Hemisphere that flows north.  We had a wonderful dinner at our hotel and this morning we are getting ready for our Rudesheim - Assmannshausen hike.  A few of us got an early start... 6am!  Team Morning Hike!  We were rewarded with a fabulous breakfast at the hotel.

Case Competition Wraps Up

We had six great presentations on the Leiber Light case and then all gathered at the Paderborner Brauhaus for a great celebration meal.

Universitaet Paderborn - Great Intercultural Learning

We are in the midst of day 2 at Uni Paderborn.  Yesterday we had our first Global Negotiation course session and today we are doing the Customer Value Case Competition.  Both have involved great intercultural interaction.  A few photos to bring this to life...

Safe & Sound in Paderborn

I forgot to take any photos to prove it, but we have arrived safe and sound in Paderborn and have cchecked in and got settled at our hotel.  It is a new location for us, so it was a new experience for everyone including me.  We went to Paderborn's Fruehlings Fest (Spring Festival) and had a nice dinner while roaming around the festival.  The group is playing cards and relaxing tonight as we start the Global Negotiation course early tomorrow (one day this week, all of next week is the course).

Reichtag Tour / Final Night in Berlin

After a day where students shopped and saw the sights of Berlin we had a great group dinner and then visited the Reichtag - Germany's Federal Capital Building.  It has an amazing history and the tour was wonderful.  I will let the photos do the talking....

The Group outside the Reichtag.  The glass dome on the top / middle is where out tour ended.  It is an amazing piece of architecture and the building itself has so much history

The chamber where the Bundestag meets - this is equivalent to our House of Representatives.  Our guide shared the similarities and differences in the way the German government works

On May 3, 1945 Russian soldiers captured the Reichtag and many wrote graffiti on the walls.  this has been preserved, and 69 years later we got to see it on May 3, 2014.  The "3-5-45" in the photo is the European way to write the date: day-month-year.

The women of GBC 2014 standing in from of the most powerful woman in the world's office: German Chancellor Angela Merkel.  Cool on many levels including that we literally were standing outside her office on the tour.  Perhaps one of these woman will be the US's first president.

The group on the roof with the dome in the background.  The dome was part of the 1995-1998 renovation of the building to allow it to once again become the capital building for Germany after the reunification of Germany about a decade earlier.  It serves both a practical and symbolic function and it is very cool to walk to the top off and see the city around you and the legislative chamber below you.

Some of us continued seeing the Berlin sites after the tour and I took this nighttime shot of the Brandenburger Tor.  It is such a great structure.